Preparation of commercial fishermen for emergencies aboard vessel can enhance crew survival. Receptiveness to safety training may be influenced by cultural factors. In the US, Coast Guard District 8 has the second highest level of vessel loss and crew fatalities in commercial fishermen. A cross-sectional survey of this group near the Port of Galveston, Texas in 2004 revealed a majority of the commercial fishermen and 95% of the shrimp fishermen to be Asian, predominantly Vietnamese. Many claimed to speak little or no English. The US Coast Guard (USCG) has reported multiple navigational situations in high traffic areas involving these vessels, resulting from failure to properly signal or communicate ship-to-ship. Two key skills identified by the USCG are use of the signaling horn and executing a mayday call. Reported obstacles have been lack of understanding and language barriers. A model was built replicating a vessel's steering wheel, speed control, horn blast, and radio, in order to simulate the bridge of a fishing vessel. Professional video/audio footage of approaching freighters was produced. Using this footage, vessel captains are instructed by an experienced mariner in Vietnamese how to listen to and signal approaching vessels with the horn. Using a double-sided tip card with English and Vietnamese instructions, they are also able to practice the mayday call. This "three-dimensional" poster will illustrate how the training is conducted. This training has been well received by Vietnamese shrimp fishermen along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast and has served as an important survey recruitment tool during the second phase of the project. From 2004-2008, 387 have been trained (including repeats). This training module serves as an example of research to practice (r2p). This hands-on experience provided in Vietnamese by experienced instructors is responsive to findings of the early project survey and focus groups. It illustrates the importance of securing stakeholder input and considering cultural factors in the design of workplace safety training interventions in this group.
Links with this icon indicate that you are leaving the CDC website.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cannot attest to the accuracy of a non-federal website.
Linking to a non-federal website does not constitute an endorsement by CDC or any of its employees of the sponsors or the information and products presented on the website.
You will be subject to the destination website's privacy policy when you follow the link.
CDC is not responsible for Section 508 compliance (accessibility) on other federal or private website.
For more information on CDC's web notification policies, see Website Disclaimers.
CDC.gov Privacy Settings
We take your privacy seriously. You can review and change the way we collect information below.
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.
Cookies used to make website functionality more relevant to you. These cookies perform functions like remembering presentation options or choices and, in some cases, delivery of web content that based on self-identified area of interests.
Cookies used to track the effectiveness of CDC public health campaigns through clickthrough data.
Cookies used to enable you to share pages and content that you find interesting on CDC.gov through third party social networking and other websites. These cookies may also be used for advertising purposes by these third parties.
Thank you for taking the time to confirm your preferences. If you need to go back and make any changes, you can always do so by going to our Privacy Policy page.